Lawrence Holland

Biographical information

Born

Career

Occupation

Companies

Star Wars work

Other works of note

Official site

"I'm partial to the main character from Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance named Ace Azameen [sic], as I'm a fighter pilot at heart. I can play both the Rebel Alliance hero flying an X-wing and a rogue mercenary flying the Millennium Falcon, two of the coolest spacecraft ever imagined."

Contents

"In archaeology one strives to recreate the past in all its detail, to make a past culture come alive through painstaking research. Games have always been a way to make worlds and events come alive as well—a world one could step into and fully experience. So, in a way, I’ve never changed careers, just career titles."

At an early age, Lawrence "Dutch" Holland[3] developed a passion for music, instilled by his mother during his childhood, and began playing trombone during fourth grade.[4] When Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope was released in 1977, Holland saw the film twice in the cinema, and only a handful more times before he came to be involved in Star Wars several years later.[3] Over the years, Holland would also come to develop an interest in hawk watching, which is now among his favorite hobbies.[2]

Holland took a job working as a chef at a restaurant in Berkeley but soon realized that he didn't want to work there throughout the six years it would take to complete his doctorate. Holland had previously had little experience with computers but his roommate at the time owned an Atari 800[5] and Holland's interest was caught by his attempts to program a game for the computer.[6] After buying his own computer, a Commodore 64, in 1982, Holland quickly became enthralled and devoted much of his time to understanding how the computer worked.[7] His curiosity led him to start programming games,[3] and he found that, unlike archaeology where he had studied others' inventions, programming gave him the opportunity to create something himself.[6] Seeing it as a chance to combine his professional and personal interests, Holland decided to embark on a career in game development.[2]

In 1984, Holland established his own development team, Micro Imagery,[9] in Marin County, California.[10] Still working in collaboration with HESware, he was soon given the chance to be creative, when he designed his first original game, Project: Space Station. The simulation gives players the chance to design and construct America's first space station and was based around accurate models of NASA technology. From Holland's perspective, the game began his interest in simulating complex worlds.[11] Around the same time, he composed the music and programmed the music interface for the C-64 and Apple II versions of The Bard's Tale (1985), an early roleplaying game. He also provided music for Music Box, a game that he also designed.[4]

"Many years ago, while working at Skywalker ranch [sic] on Battlehawks 1942, I overheard two people talking over my shoulder about the game I was working on. Imagine my surprise when I turned around and saw Steven Spielberg and George Lucas discussing it and learning further that Steven Spielberg was playing and enjoying it."

Around 1986, Holland was interviewed by Lucasfilm Games (now LucasArts) about working on Labyrinth: The Computer Game.[12] Although he did not join the company at that time, in mid-1986, Holland learned that Lucasfilm Games was looking for a programmer to convert their first simulation game from the C-64 to the Apple II. Holland had experience in programming for both systems, as well as with simulations due to his recent work on Project: Space Station. He was eager to pursue his work on simulations, but wanted to continue working freelance, and the Lucasfilm Games contract allowed for both. After joining Lucasfilm Games, Holland was one of less than a dozen staff based in George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch. His first project was working with Noah Falstein to convert the modern naval simulation game PHM Pegasus, developed for Electronic Arts since Lucasfilm Games was not yet a publisher, to the Apple II.[7] The project, in which combat revolved around the hydrofoil developed by the United States Navy in the 1970s,[13] furthered his growing interest in military history and inspired him to start thinking of worlds he would like to simulate.[7]PHM Pegasus was the first Lucasfilm Games product to sell more than 100,000 copies.[13] By the time PHM Pegasus was released, Lucasfilm was already planning a sequel, which eventually became Strike Fleet (1987). Holland worked as designer and software engineer on the game, which was also released by Electronic Arts.[12] The game expanded on its predecessor, allowing players to control entire fleets during the Cold War.[14] The game was considered one of the first real-time strategy games.[13]

Much of Holland's early work involved programming but, with the relatively small teams assigned to each game, he soon found opportunities to work in other areas. Having already had some experience in game design, from 1988, he took on full game design and project management roles, in addition to his programming work.[7] Holland started researching for a third naval simulator, becoming interested in the battles between Amercian and Japaneseaircraft carriers during World War II. He also started to contemplate working on a flight simulator.[5]

After Electronic Arts rejected a proposed sequel to Strike Fleet, Holland approached Lucasfilm Games with an idea for a simulation called Air Wing, producing a tech demo inspired by his research into aerial combat over the Pacific Ocean.[12] Holland wanted to produce a flight simulator that offered fast paced action but was initially concerned about the quality of rendered polygons making it difficult to recognize different types of aircraft. He ultimately decided to use 2D bitmaps to represent the aircraft.[5]Air Wing eventually evolved into Battlehawks 1942 (1988), the first of a series of flight simulators set in World War II.[12]Battlehawks 1942 sees players control six American and Japanese planes during a series of battles over the Pacific.[13] Holland wanted the game to focus not just on the aircraft involved, but to to look at the history involved, particularly how the actions of pilots influenced the course of the war.[5]

The five-person team began work on the game in March 1988 and the game shipped in September of that year. To model the real-world planes in the game, Holland's team bought and painted models of the aircraft, using photographs of the models to to produce acetate overlays which were placed over the artists' monitors and traced.[12] The attention to detail paid off and the game received praise due to its historical accuracy.[13] The game was also named Action Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World and Program of the Year by Computer Entertainer.[10]

The sequel to Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain (1989), transferred the action to British and German planes fighting over the English coastline.[13] Like its predecessor, Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain achieved the Action Game of the Year title in Computer Gaming World as well as entering the magazine's Hall of Fame. It was also awarded a Game Players PC Award of Excellence and named Best Thinking Man's Game by Forbes Magazine.[10] The game came with its own mission editor and Lucasfilm Games ran a competition called "Their Finest Mission" to develop scenarios with the chance to win a trip to England. Some of these player-submitted missions were bundled with extra planes and released as an expansion pack for the game. Robin Parker of Lucasfilm's marketing department assisted with the packaging for the expansion disks and helped with research into World War II.[12] Parker worked as Product Marketing Manager at Lucasfilm Games until she joined Holland's own company in 1993.[15] The two married around this time, something which helped Holland put an end to nights spent sleeping in his office.[8]

For the third game in the series, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (1991), Holland's design expanded on the previous games with a strategy element which allowed the player's actions to influence the whole war. The increased complexity saw the development team expand by two programmers, a producer/mission designer and two artists, yet still took longer to complete than anticipated.[12]Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe allows players to control either American or German planes and follows the 8th Air Force's campaign against the Luftwaffe towards the end of the war. The game allows players to explore potential scenarios by including planes that were still under development at the time and would later be followed by four expansion packs, providing additional campaigns and aircraft.[13] The game was PC Magazine's Best Pick of 1991 and Best Simulation of the Year in Computer Game Review.[10] The success of the series helped Holland to gain a reputation as one of the industry's best simulator developers.[3]

"Even though it was happening in space, the way these ships flew, the speed, the way they interacted, was very WWII-esque. So we got to migrate to this world that really drew from our roots but freed us from historical events."

By the time Battlehawks 1942 was released in 1988, Lucasfilm Games had already given some thought to the idea of a space combat simulator. The obvious subject matter was Star Wars and then-general manager Steve Arnold met with designers to discuss applying World War II fighter plane mechanics to space combat. As Holland's team studied more footage of dogfights during the war, they realized how closely George Lucas had based the combat scenes in the Star Warsoriginal trilogy on similar footage and how their existing flight engine could be adapted. However, the license to produce games on the series was held by Brøderbund at the time and the idea was put on hold.[12]

Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham

When Brøderbund's license expired, the idea came up once more and, in February 1991, Lucasfilm Games asked Edward Kilham to begin work on the project. The game was in its planning stages while Holland was still working on Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and the original intention was for Kilham to lead the project himself. Kilham, however, felt that producing the kind of simulator the project required would need Holland's expertise.[3] Holland was among those at the company who initially questioned whether there was a market for such a game set in the Star Wars universe, but with renewed interest in the franchise following the release of Timothy Zahn's novel Heir to the Empire in May 1991,[12] and encouraged by Lucasfilm Games' Brian Moriarty, Holland decided the time was right, so,[16] after Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe was completed, Holland's team joined Kilham in working on the project..[3]

As the exclusive holders of the Star Wars license, the team did not have to worry about competition as they had with their World War II efforts and found that they had more freedom in the project. Holland and Kilham each led on different parts of the game, working on design, programming and project management, with Holland focusing on the flight engine, while Kilham worked on the front-end. Inspired by the storyline elements of Wing Commander and a desire to create a flight engine which was more engaging and allowed players flexibility in approaching missions, the two began combining Holland's technology with Kilham's cinematic approach to storytelling.[3] The team initially used 2D bitmaps to represent the starships, the same technique which they had used on previous flight sims and which involved a six-month process of drawing the ships from several angles. Much to the dismay of the artists, the decision was eventually made to switch back to polygons[12] and the 3D engine developed by Peter Lincroft was technologically advanced for the time. Holland's flight engine complemented this by increasing the number of potential craft in missions from around fifteen in Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe to around twenty-eight[3] but concerns over the new technology used by the game remained for much of the development.[12]

The Death Star trench run, as portrayed in Star Wars: X-wing.

The developers watched all the films in the Star Wars original trilogy, paying close attention to the style and performance of the ships, as well as looking for potential situations for the game. They also tried to tie in some elements from the growing Expanded Universe of books, comics and the West End Gamesroleplaying game. One of the most important elements was attempting to balance the game to ensure that the player remained central to success, in the hopes of recreating the heroic scale of Luke Skywalker's adventures.[3] Holland felt it was important to show both sides of a conflict, as he had with Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, and he originally planned for players to fly for either the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire. However, the initial design proved too elaborate and, with a desire to get the project moving quickly, the team decided to focus on the Rebellion, trimming the scope down to something achievable.[12]

Star Wars: X-Wing was released in February 1993, the first Star Wars game published by LucasArts (as the company was now known).[13] Players control Keyan Farlander, a new recruit in the Rebel Alliance, whose story was told by the accompanying novella, The Farlander Papers, by Rusel DeMaria. Through a series of three campaigns, the player flew X-wing, Y-wing and A-wingstarfighters against the Galactic Empire, culminating in the attack on the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin. Holland, however, was still uncertain about how the game would be received and whether those who had played his previous games would make the transition from World War II to Galactic Civil War.[12] The game went on to become one of the best selling games of the year[13] and received awards including Simulation of the Year in Computer Gaming World, Best Simulation of 1993 in Computer Game Review and Best Game of 1993 in Electronic Entertainment.[10] To reward their success, Lucasfilm's president, Gordon Radley, took Holland's team to dinner at the Lark Creek Inn in Larkspur, California. Holland later described the recognition from the movie-industry side of George Lucas's business as "the coolest moment."[12]

Later that year, the game received two expansion packs, each of which added an extra campaign to the game. Imperial Pursuit told of the Rebel's flight from Yavin 4 following the destruction of the Death Star, while B-wing covered the establishment of Echo Base on Hoth and the development of a new playable craft, the B-wing starfighter. The game was re-released in 1994 on CD-ROM with the expansion packs included as Star Wars: X-wing (Collector's CD-ROM).[17]

Holland and Kilham did not entirely abandon their desire to examine both sides of the Galactic Civil War. With X-wing focused on the Rebel side of the conflict, they started to contemplate creating a trilogy, with each game looking at the war from a different perspective.[18] By the time of X-wing's release, the developers were already developing ideas for the sequel and were "looking into the dark side."[3] With all previous Star Wars works focused on the Rebellion, Holland expected some opposition to creating a game told from the Imperial perspective, but found that those within Lucasfilm were intrigued by the concept. The team began formulating the story, taking elements from the films as a basis. Intrigued by Grand AdmiralThrawn from Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, they decided to include the character and explore his early career.[18] In developing the story, the team took care to portray the Empire as a strong military force, maintaining order in the galaxy, and not to show them as a purely evil organization.[12]

The 1994 sequel, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, sees players take the role of Imperial recruit Maarek Stele, whose story was again told by a DeMaria novella, The Stele Chronicles. The game's story sees players fight not only the Rebel Alliance, but a variety of smaller factions (as well as traitors from within the Imperial Navy itself) over the course of several campaigns. As well as revisiting the earlier idea of letting players take on the role of an Imperial pilot, Holland was also keen to address the game's difficulty, as some players had found X-wing too challenging.[12] The final game featured multiple difficulty settings, along with an improved graphics engine and a wider variety of controllable craft, allowing players to fly the TIE Fighter, TIE Interceptor and TIE Bomber from the films, as well as the new TIE Advanced, TIE Defender and Assault Gunboat.[19] However, the decision to release the game on five floppy disks rather than CD-ROM forced the team to cut down the amount of animated cutscenes, digitized voice and sound effects to fit.[20] An expansion pack, Defender of the Empire, released later the same year, provided additional campaigns to continue the story and added the new Missile Boat as a flyable craft. In 1995, the game was re-released on CD-ROM as Star Wars: TIE Fighter (Collector's CD-ROM), which included both Defender of the Empire and the concluding expansion pack Enemies of the Empire.[17]

TIE Fighter was a major critical and commercial success for LucasArts.[12] The game was awarded Best Action Game by PC Gamer and, in 1997, was the magazine's Best Game of All Time. It was also named Best Game of the Year by Strategy Plus and entered the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame.[10]Michael A. Stackpole was influenced by X-wing and TIE Fighter while writing the X-wing novels and acknowledged Holland and Kilham in the books.[21]

"It's a handful, but I wouldn't do anything else. There's nothing like watching a game take shape, as new features and gameplay are realized. It's exciting to get to that moment where we can stand back and say, 'It's alive!'"

The years following TIE Fighter's release were busy for Holland as his team became officially incorporated in California[10] in January[20] 1994.[10] Though originally called Micro Imagery, the company changed its name to Peregrine Software during the early 1990s. Within two weeks of displaying the new name on a plague outside, thieves broke into the office next door and cut a hole through the wall, stealing all of Holland's computers.[12] Holland changed his team's name once more, finally settling on Totally Games in 1995.[2] Holland's vision for Totally Games was the creation of more engrossing worlds which would lead to the "total involvement" of players in their games.[2] Shortly after the company's incorporation, Holland worked on a strategy game for Microsoft.[20]

As the Founder, President and Creative Director of the company,[2] Holland's role included overseeing the direction of the business. With the larger teams working on modern game titles, Holland found himself increasingly devoted to design and project management, with less involvement in programming. His work at this time largely consisted of originating the concept and vision for games, working with a design team to produce a design document, and overseeing all aspects of development including staff, schedule and budget.[7] Even so, his childhood love of music remained and he took an active interest in how music was used in the company's games.[4]

Holland soon returned to the X-wing series with 1997's Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. The game was based around taking the previously single-player only action of X-wing and TIE Fighter online, allowing players to fly for either the Empire or the Rebel Alliance in multiplayer battles across a LAN or the Internet.[13] This departure from previous games in the series was prompted by Holland's continued desire to allow players to experience both sides of the Galactic Civil War, and a feeling that the technology had reached the level required to make a multiplayer game possible. The decision, however, necessitated a major shift in the series as individual players could no longer be the center of the action and teamwork would be required for success.[22]

The game allowed players to fly nine different ships from either the Empire or the Rebel Alliance and either cooperate with up to seven wingmates or compete against each other in a series of skirmishes and campaigns.[13] The game featured a new engine, making it the first in the series to use hardware accelerated graphics to provide a smoother, more detailed experience.[23] The three-person programming team often worked through the night attempting to overcome problems associated with online games at the time, such as latency and packet drops. Many problems, they discovered, were as a result of Internet usage patterns—on one occasion, Holland left the office in the early hours after one problem had apparently been resolved only to discover it returned during a heavier usage the next day. During particularly heavy periods, ships would warp or disappear as the connection struggled to transfer data quickly enough, making the precision aiming required almost impossible. Data transfer issues continued to plague the game after release and, while those playing on a LAN experienced a smooth game, those playing on the Internet were left frustrated by the technical problems.[12]

Another common criticism of X-wing vs. TIE Fighter was the lack of a single-player story, which had alienated some fans of the previous games.[12] This was addressed with the release of the Balance of Power expansion pack later that year, which added the B-wing as a playable ship and a single-player campaign which could be approached as either the Empire or the Alliance.[13] Like its predecessors, X-wing vs. TIE Fighter was critically acclaimed and was named Best Science Fiction Simulation Game of 1997 by CNET as well as topping the 1997 Hot Holiday 100 List in Computer Gaming World.[10]

In 1998, X-wing and TIE Fighter were re-released once more as part of Star Wars: X-wing Collector Series. Updated for Windows 9x and to use the X-wing vs. TIE Fighter engine, the games were bundled with a cut-down version of X-wing vs. TIE Fighter itself, called X-wing vs. TIE Fighter Flight School.

Holland's most recent contribution to Star Wars was 1999's Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance, the final game in the X-wing series. Envisioned as "Star Wars meets the Godfather,"[17] the game sees players taking on the role of Rebel recruit Ace Azzameen, flying the Rebel fighters from previous games in action against the Empire. However, the game also had a more personal story, giving the player a chance to fly YT-1300 and YT-2000light freighters in missions for the Azzameen family. Along with an updated graphics engine, the game featured several new features such as being able to dock the ship and multiple hyperspace jumps during missions. Despite all the changes, however, X-wing Alliance was built on the same flight-simulator technology that powered Battlehawks 1942—the seventh game to be based on the technology.[12]

In addition to the over fifty single-player missions,[13] the game built on X-wing vs. TIE Fighter by including a multiplayer mode which overcame the data-transfer problems encountered by its predecessor. X-wing Alliance provided both free-for-all and objective-based multiplayer battles, allowing players to customize their own scenarios and play them online.[12] Totally Games was able to significantly increase the number of ships in any one mission, allowing the epic Battle of Endor to be recreated with the player controlling the Millennium Falcon during the attack on the second Death Star.[24]X-wing Alliance continued the series' critical success and was given an Editor's Choice award in PC Gamer as well as being named best Star Wars game by the Chicago Tribune.[10] The game was re-released in 2000, packaged with the 1998 versions of X-wing, TIE Fighter and X-wing vs. TIE Fighter Flight School as Star Wars: X-wing Trilogy.

Totally Games gave Holland further opportunities, though not all were successful—he conceived of a game based on European civilization arriving in the New World during the late 15th and early 16th century but found little interest from publishers.[6] He did, however, work on another major science fiction franchise, producing the Star Trek-based game Star Trek: Bridge Commander in 2002. Totally Games was approached by Activision while finishing work on X-wing Alliance and asked to develop a Star Trek space combat game. After many years spent working on Star Wars-related games, Holland and his team were enthusiastic about the new challenge and their idea was accepted by Activision a few months later.[25] The game puts players in command of a Starfleetstarship, with responsibility over all aspects of its crew and operation, and represented a departure from the style of the X-wing series, with the larger ships involved in battles providing more of a tactical feel to the combat.[26] Holland was proud of the game, feeling they had captured the essence of Star Trek,[16] and it was well received by critics, with awards including Best Simulation Game 2002 on IGN and Best Game in Class on GameSpot.[10] However, the game was not as commercially successful as he hoped, something he later attributed to declining interest in the space combat genre combined with the decline of the Star Trek franchise.[16]

An X-wing chases TIE Fighters in Secret Weapons Over Normandy.

Holland also had the opportunity to return to his love of World War II flight combat, as well as to renew his involvement with LucasArts, when Totally Games developed a new historical simulator for the company.[7] The idea of returning to World War II was suggested by LucasArts' Randy Breen when he met with Holland to discuss working on a project together. Holland ultimately pitched Secret Weapons Over Normandy, a game which combined the concepts of his earlier historical simulators with the story driven experience of the X-wing series. In the game, players take on the role of an American pilot in the Royal Air Force fighting against the Luftwaffe's latest weapons in the skies over Europe.[16] In references to Holland's previous work, the player's squadron was called The Battlehawks[12] and players who completed the game's fifteen campaign missions and twenty-one challenge missions could unlock the X-wing and TIE Fighter as playable craft.[27]

Secret Weapons Over Normandy was designed as a console game for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, though it was also released on the PC, and was more action-based than Holland's previous simulations. Though Holland was pleased with how the game turned out on the consoles, he later admitted that it was a mistake to think the gameplay would appeal to PC gamers, who had grown used to the deeper simulation offered by his previous games. Despite the negativity towards the PC version of the games, Secret Weapons Over Normandy continued the attention to detail of previous games in the series, with the developers studying period aircraft and recording the engine noises for use in the game, as well as interviewing pilots who flew in the war.[12]

In addition to continuing commercial game development, Holland has led Totally Games into new areas. In 2005, the company linked up with Digital Mill to develop an unmanned aerial vehicle simulation for DARPA.[28] The company also developed two advergaming projects for Walt Disney World Resort. The games, Buzz Lightyear Astroblasters and Expedition Everest, were made available on Disney's website and designed to tie-in with attractions at the company's resorts.[29]

Even after more than twenty years in the industry, Holland remained enthusiastic about creating games[2] and in 2007 completed work on Alien Syndrome, an update of the 1987 game, produced by Sega. The design attempted to expand the original's science fiction action with roleplaying elements in order to satisfy a modern audience and involved a major redesign, rather than a simple graphical update.[30] The game also represented a new direction for the company, away from their flight simulator roots and into the action RPG genre.[9]

In 2008, Totally Games worked on PBR: Out of the Chute, a rodeo game published by D2C Games.[31] In October that year, a difficult financial situation led Totally Games to change their business model and switch to development of virtual games.[32] Holland was later contacted by Cisco Systems to develop Mind Share, an IT training game,[33] and Totally Games also worked on GoldWalker, an iPhone game developed for Humana. As of June2010, the company were working on a downloadable PC game for Nickelodeon and a Facebook project.[32]